The Water Consumption of AI: A Tool to Truly Understand Your Usage
Narratives about the water consumption of artificial intelligence have been either exaggerated or outright false. A tool by researcher Andy Masley provides concrete figures, with the added benefit of explaining the methodology.
Regarding water consumption and artificial intelligence, narratives have been either exaggerated or outright false. It is a field where outrage spreads much faster than data, and an impactful figure can be shared thousands of times without anyone verifying its source.
Researcher Andy Masley has developed a tool to illustrate what percentage of your daily water use is represented by your AI usage. The tool is available in English and allows individuals to contextualise their consumption, rather than relying on an abstract headline about litres per query.
An important and highly interesting aspect of Andy Masley's tool is its methodology section, which details how calculations are made. This is a fundamental difference from most alarmist estimates, which tend to present a final figure without explaining its source or what is included and excluded. Without methodology, a figure cannot be verified, compared, or debated; it can only be believed or not.
This is, in fact, the underlying issue. It is true that mass use of technology has an environmental impact and must be measured. However, proper measurement requires transparently expressing your assumptions: whether you count the cooling water of data centres, whether you allocate it per query or per user, if you include the water used to generate electricity, and what sources are considered. Comparing the consumption of a query with everyday activities, with numbers available for scrutiny, facilitates an honest debate, rather than forcing a choice between denying the issue or exaggerating it absurdly.
Using tools like this, with assumptions laid bare, is the only way to have an honest debate about the environmental impact of technology. Denying the problem and exaggerating it to absurdity are two sides of the same lack of rigour, and both impede sound decision-making.